Waiting For The Dead
by Mellaithwen
Summary: Sam and Dean spend Halloween waiting in a cemetery for their prey to rise.


**Waiting For The Dead**

**By Mellaithwen**

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**Rating: T**

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**Genre: Angst/Drama**

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**Disclaimer: Still not mine. **

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**S****ummary: Sam and Dean spend Halloween waiting in a cemetery for their prey to rise.**

**This was my second prompt on the livejournal community spn-halloween: **_**Sam and Dean spend Halloween night at a graveyard, waiting to see if a recently buried vamp victim wakes up as a vampire.** _

* * *

The church looms up high. Its bricks are chipped and crumbling, but its windows—unappreciated as they are in the night—still let the starlight shine through. Little specks of white on a biblical background. Grand stories of the brave and fearsome, good and evil, illuminated by the harsh blanket of darkness above and the tiny candles lit inside, protected from the buildings winds by the giant oak doors.

The graveyard is like any other they've been too. Occasionally they'll be surprised—maybe they'll arrive to see a meticulously tidy cemetery, with graves evenly spaced so carefully that Sam's pretty sure they're not a millimetre out of place.

But in the most part, they're like this.

The gate is as tall as the church. Unnecessarily so, and harder to scale. But they manage it. Just. Dean's coat catches on the spiked iron rods lining the top of the gate and he bitches for ten minutes when he hears the black jacket rip. He's secretly glad he left the leather at home.

But come nightfall, he'll long for the extra warmth it would have offered.

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Sam asks, bored with his own silence and curious about Dean's actions.

"Getting the crap off my shoe." Dean replies absently while using the moist blades of grass to clean the mashed fruit off of his boots.

"I told you to watch out." Sam quips with a frown hiding a smirk, recalling how he had indeed said quite clearly _watch the pumpkin_, but his voice had been wistful enough for Dean to stare—amused—and ignore the impromptu warning...

That reared its ugly head—carved and all as Dean had ploughed his foot straight through.

* * *

The grass is—for lack of a better word—mushy. The mud is thicker than the tiny blades of green grass. Dandelions crushed beneath heavy biker boots. The mushrooms are thick and growing in their own little corner near the winding, rickety, old and breaking path. Its cracks overgrown with squishy moss and tiny weeds leads all the way to the back of the church. A yard surrounded by a cobbled brick wall.

The uneven stones representing every out of place soul roaming the grounds.

The sky is almost completely clear, with only a few clouds in the distance to reflect the waning sunlight as it sets to the night. The trees stand tall against the white pale background as bare skeletons without their leaves.

The wind bristles through them steadily as the temperatures begin to drop.

* * *

"What happens if someone comes along, I mean usually we come here under the cover of darkness."

"And we will be in—" He checked his watch. "Two hours."

"Yeah, so until then..."

"Dude its Halloween; I'm surprised more people aren't hanging out here."

"Excuse me?"

"Tonight we're normal. Tonight people are dressed up as zombies and ghosts and monsters, but us? We're regular joe's."

"Hanging out in a cemetery."

"On Halloween."

"Right."

"We're _normal_."

"You're a freak."

"So are you." Dean says with a frown that says _duh_ as he contradicts himself completely.

"But what if someone does come. What if his family come? They'll want to know—"

"Then we'll lie and cheat and scam our way out of trouble like we always do."

Sam says nothing about how tired Dean sounds.

* * *

The grave reads Annabel Roberts, 1982 – 2006. The stone is clean and they hazard a guess that it's only been there a few hours. Dean thinks it's a shame. Rock and child. Sam thinks this whole thing is ridiculous and unnecessary.

The granite is grey with flecks of brown that remind Sam of blood spatter on a wall outside of Michigan and his brother dead with a bullet in his brain.

It reminds Dean of yet another gravestone in yet another cemetery because he's seen so many. Too many. That he can think of nothing else.

* * *

"Dean..."

"She'll show."

"She's not a business partner Dean, she's dead."

"Undead."

"We don't know that yet!"

"Don't start this again, Sam."

"Quit whining."

"I'm not whining, I'm just wondering why we have to stay out here when we don't even know if this girl's gonna rise."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're basing all of this on an old newspaper article and the hearsay of the townsfolk! Sketchy at best. Hell, _they_ might not even rise, we know nothing about Vampires."

"We know how to kill them Sam, what else do you need?"

Sam gapes.

"So we're going into this half-assed?"

"It's an easy job, Sammy."

"Until someone gets killed."

"Why? You planning on doing something stupid?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything. You're the one saying someone's gonna get killed—"

"Yeah and you immediately assume I'm the one who's screw up!"

"So you think I'm going to, is that it?"

"Because I always think I'm _so_ much better than you, right Dean?"

"You know this would constitute as _whiny_."

"What time is it?" Sam growls.

"Subject change? That's subtle, really, Sam."

"What time is it?"

"Time for you to buy a watch."

"Dean!"

"Okay, jeez, its nine-thirty."

"We've been here over three hours, Dean. You're shivering for god sake."

"Yeah? Well your skin looks blue."

"Might have something to do with the full moon above us."

"Unlikely."

"Likely."

"Shut up, Dean."

Dean just laughs

* * *

The paper said nothing about barbeque-fork-wounds around the jugular, but the mention of foul play was enough for Dean to read on further. They had just finished a job; a tedious ghost annoying the town chapel, when Sam had pointed out the mass amount of local police cordoning off areas and waiting for forensics to turn up.

The article mentioned blood loss and trauma as a cause of death, but nothing more.

It was the gossip that got them hunting.

When the crowds formed around the scene of the crime, causing the old and young to hover beside the yellow tape, Sam and Dean placed themselves within. Blended in with others of the community and casually eavesdropped on all that was being said.

"It's back," One elderly man had spoken to his friend, who promptly hit him and hissed,

"Shut up."

"I told you it would."

"You're full of bull, Grady."

The boys listened as Grady and his friend discussed in hushed tones the last time something of this sort had happened.

It took Sam an hour and a half to dig up everything to back the old men's words, but he found it nonetheless and the words stuck out like a sore thumb from an article written in the early 80's.

_Murder, trauma, blood loss._

Just like Annabel Roberts.

With the addition of a _three-pronged-kitchen-appliance._

* * *

"Where the hell are you going?" Dean shouts across the hallowed ground as Sam gets up and makes his way to the exit. The older Winchester quickly scrambles after him, grabbing his brother's jacket to stop him completely.

"It's freezing, Dean. The thing should have risen by now and I'm not gonna stay out here and wait for snow""

"You're being ridiculous."

"Dean, if this _was_ a vampire attack, then why did it wait so long? Huh? Why now?"

"Three farms have been forced to shut down, Sam. Three farms that have had animal carcasses disappearing for nearly twenty years—"

"So if it's so afraid to attack that it's willing to drink cow's blood, why the sudden bravery?"

"Because it was desperate! Because it was hungry, because _I freakin' said so_!"

"One more hour." Sam finally gives in. "And then I'm going back to the motel, I mean it."

"Sure thing, Sam." Dean lies.

* * *

Another hour passes, and Dean's glad that he's the only one wearing a watch. They're both still standing since Sam tried to leave, and the younger Winchester's been quiet for over half an hour now, so Dean's already anticipating his brother's complaints.

There's a groan.

"Quit _whining_, Sam!"

Sam stares at his brother just as Dean turns to look at him, exasperated.

"Uh, Dean? That wasn't me."

And before Dean can react a surprisingly slender grip takes hold of his trouser leg and yanks him down. His ankle is quickly buried underneath the soil and his arms are thrown out in search of _anything_.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean yells as his foot is dragged further through the mud—the grave—up to his ankle. He starts to topple over. "Sam!" He calls but his brother has his hands full with the salt canister running around them in a circle.

He pulls frantically at his knee trying to dislodge himself but the Vampire—he assumes—is holding fast. It occurs to him then, that they never did ask their father if it mattered where someone was bitten to get turned.

"Sam!" He calls again. "Need a little help here!" He feels the pull grow stronger and cries out when his calf is nearly completely submerged.

Sam leaps forward, grabs Dean's arms and pulls. Pulls his brother, staring him straight in the eye.

"I've got you." He tells him with more confidence than Dean could ever hope to possess at this very moment. "I've got you."

He pulls again, keeps pulling, keeps hold of his brother until Dean's shouting because he can feel his knee straining from the pulling on both ends. His teeth are bared, and Sam knows he's pulling too.

"Sam..."

Sudden thoughts of being buried alive worm their way into Dean's brain like the insects he can feel crawling along his thighs as he feels himself fall deeper into the grave. He can taste blood from biting his lip too hard to stop himself from screaming at Sam for not pulling harder.

Another yank from undead fingers and another hand shoots out—taking hold of Dean's other ankle. The sharp pain holds him tightly and he's off balance in a second, lying on his stomach and pulling at his brother, holding fast.

_Don't let go, don't let go, don't let go._

Sam's jaw is tight, and the vein in his neck pulses as he pulls desperately. But it isn't enough and when his grip falters, the horror on Dean's face is unmistakable.

Sam reaches for the closest shot gun, warns Dean by aiming the thing, and shoots into the grave once, twice, thee times until he sees the lax in Dean's tense leg muscles and shoots again, and again. He reaches out to Dean once more, and pulls against the only resistance left; soil.

"Jesus Christ!" Sam cries, panting from exertion when finally they're both lying back on the grass. Dean lays there in silence. His eyes are closes and his breathing ragged, but he's above ground completely now at least.

Sam feels the chuckle buried deep in his chest, and has to let it out. As he reaches for the torch discarded and flickering. The fear of nearly letting go weighing him down until all he can do is let it out anyway that he can.

He stops laughing when the flashlight catches the red blood stains on Dean's jeans. Sam's hands reach out to pull the denim back, but Dean shuffles away and starts getting up.

With great difficulty.

His legs ache, his knees throb and his ankles are creating puddles of blood inside of his boots.

Sam doesn't move, he doesn't need to. He waits a few seconds until Dean gives up and falls back down onto the disturbed sod. He doesn't stop Sam from probing the wounds.

"They're not bite-marks. That's something." He said, frowning at the half moon shaped holes so close to the bone on Dean's ankle. "She dug her nails straight through." He sounds almost horrified, and Dean swallows the bile in his throat.

He looks at his own ankle and spots something foul protruding from his own skin, sprouting blood beneath it. Hard yellow with fleshy strands of pink and green. He yelps and smacks away the offending nail—still attached to a fair portion of the finger—before successfully turning over and puking in the grass.

"I don't think they're that deep." Sam muses as Dean wipes his mouth with a grimace. "But we should probably take you to the hospital."

"What? They're scratches Sam."

"Made by the dead, who knows what kinda shit they could get infected with. Plus the _soil_—"

"I am not going to the hospital because some dead chick dug too deep!"

"Why do you always have to be like this?"

"If you hadn't thrown the usual hissy fit she never would have gotten hold!"

"And if you had listened to me in the first place none of this would have happened!"

"Are you kidding me? I was right! You were wrong!"

"You said she'd rise, she didn't rise! She tried to get you in there instead of attacking out here. You still ignored me and went into all of this half-assed—"

"Go to hell, Sam."

"Already there, asshole."

"You're calling me an asshole? You let go of me, and you're calling me an asshole?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"Yes you did! You let go and nearly shot my foot off!" As serious as Dean's tone was, Sam found it hard to hide his own smile as he shouted in return.

"It got you free didn't it?"

"So not the point, Sammy," and before Sam could reply, Dean had his hand raised, and head shaking a _no_, "Sammy, not Sam, _Sammy_, because that vampire nearly—shit."

"What?"

"We've still gotta behead the bitch."

There was a groan.

And this time, it _was_ Sam.

**-Fin.**

**Please Review!**

**Hope everyone had a good Halloween :)**


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